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“News crews trapped me in my rental house. It’s a long story, but Reid and Tilly Margolis flew me, if you can believe it, by helicopter to their winery in Oregon.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No. I’m with Nora and Ellis. Reid and Tilly are here, too, and they’re all plotting the best way to handle the press. The plan is to bide our time here for the weekend. Any news on Margot Gray?”
“No. If she’s still in Cedar Creek, she’s doing a great job of avoiding my deputies. And if she’s on the road, no one in the Nevada State Police can find her.”
“Great.”
“Oh, and the phone number she gave you for Guy Menendez was a burner phone, so there’s no way to trace it.”
“Damn it!”
“We’re not done looking. We’ll find her.”
“Thanks, Eric.”
Sloan ended the call and walked into the bathroom to brush her teeth and prepare for bed. With the water running and her electric toothbrush buzzing, she thought she heard something out in the main room, as if maybe the front door had opened. She twisted the handle on the faucet and turned her toothbrush off. She listened for a moment but heard nothing. She stepped out of the bathroom and walked to the front door. She moved the curtains to the side and peered out into the night. The main house was dark but for a lone window on the second story. A figure appeared beyond the curtains just before the light went out and the entire house stood in darkness.
Sloan reached for the deadbolt and twisted it into place.
CHAPTER 54
Cedar Creek, Nevada Thursday, August 1, 2024
MARVIN MANN TURNED ON THE LATE-NIGHT CABLE NEWS AS HE packed his pipe tight with tobacco and cozied into his recliner. At sixty-three years old, Marvin was living his best life. Other than an arthritic hip angered by foul weather, and a right eye hazy from a developing cataract, he was in damn good shape. He golfed twice a week and played in a cribbage league on Thursday nights. His children were grown and scattered, and much of his travel schedule involved he and his wife flying around the country to visit them and his four grandchildren—from as far as New York, to as close as San Francisco.
Although Marvin and his wife had considered moving over the years, they’d always found their way back to Cedar Creek. They’d sampled trial runs in Phoenix, Santa Fe, and even an extended six-month stay in St. Petersburg to see what the buzz of Florida was all about. None of the locations suited them quite right, and after years of searching, they decided Cedar Creek was the place they’d live out their years. It wasn’t simply home or where he was born, it was where he’d made his living. His occupation was not something he could pick up and perform in another state. Marvin had spent more than a decade as a legal investigator for Margolis & Margolis, and when his tenure ended with the death of Baker Jauncey, he retired from legal investigation and set up his own private investigation service.
Today, his agency employed twenty-six investigators and, although he’d slowed down over the years, Marvin had yet to retire. In his sixties now, he was no longer doing fieldwork—that was for the kids who could hide in hedges and stay awake all night on stakeouts. His role nowadays was as the face of the agency. He nurtured his network of contacts, which included attorneys, law enforcement personnel, Nevada State Police detectives, and a short list of ex-cons he kept on the payroll when he needed something dicey. The bottom line was that until someone could step up and run the agency more efficiently, Marvin was going to continue working. He didn’t mind.
He finished packing his pipe just as a replay of American Events came back from commercial break. He heard Avery Mason’s familiar voice as she started a segment.
“Now to breaking news,” the newsmagazine host said, “out of Cedar Creek, Nevada, a small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Of course, many of us are familiar with Cedar Creek because of the missing Margolis family that captured the attention of the nation. In 1995, Preston and Annabelle Margolis disappeared with their infant daughter, Charlotte. For decades there have been no breaks in the case, and the family’s whereabouts have remained a mystery. But now, in a stunning twist to the nearly thirty-year-old mystery, baby Charlotte Margolis has been found alive and well living in Raleigh, North Carolina.”
Marvin turned his attention away from his pipe, stood from his recliner, and walked slowly toward the television. The picture of a pretty young woman filled the screen.
“Sloan Hastings submitted her DNA to an online genealogy site and learned she was not only related to the Margolis family of Harrison County, Nevada,” Avery Mason continued, “but that her DNA profile suggested she was baby Charlotte Margolis, missing for nearly three decades. Sloan Hastings is a twenty-nine-year-old physician training to become a medical examiner under our network’s very own medical consultant, Dr. Livia Cutty. Sloan Hastings’s adoptive parents, Dolly and Todd Hastings, are dentists from Raleigh, North Carolina. So far there are no details about how the Hastings came to adopt Charlotte Margolis, but our sources assure us that Dolly and Todd Hastings are not suspected in baby Charlotte’s disappearance. To this point, there is no word on the whereabouts of Preston and Annabelle Margolis. The FBI is involved in the investigation, and we will keep you up-to-date on any developments. Here with us now in the studio is Dr. Craig Fanning, a genealogist who will help us understand how this remarkable discovery was made using genetic tracing and DNA technology.”
Marvin lifted the remote and shut off the television. He stood in silence as the information settled and his mind processed what he’d just heard. He had long suspected that the timing of the Margolis family’s disappearance, so closely packed around the deaths of both his old boss, Baker Jauncey, and Sheriff Sandy Stamos, was not a simple coincidence. He knew back then that the events were all connected, but had lacked the courage to try to piece the details together.
He placed the unlit pipe to his mouth and walked into his office. He sat at his desk and opened the top drawer, pulling it as far as it would slide. Taped to the back of the drawer he found the small, yellow envelope he’d hidden there years ago. Inside was a key to the safe deposit box he had opened with Sandy Stamos. For nearly thirty years he had paid the yearly fee on the box, but had never once been back to the Reno bank to look at the contents. He’d read through those documents once, and that had been enough. They had gotten two people killed and Marvin had never been anxious to revisit the documents. Still, he knew enough not to get rid of them.
He pulled the key from the envelope and spun it in his fingers. It was time, Marvin knew, to wake the demons from the past. He’d allowed them to sleep too long.
CHAPTER 55
Bend, Oregon Friday, August 2, 2024
SLOAN WOKE FRIDAY MORNING TO A STEADY CLINKING COMING FROM outside her window. It took a moment to remember where she was. The king-sized bed and its down comforter swallowed her and kept at bay the chill from the air conditioner in the guest cottage. The pounding outside continued. She pushed the covers to the side and stood from the bed, lifting the plantation shutters and squinting against the morning sun.
Out in the field, fifty yards from her bedroom window, was a large, yellow construction machine that looked like a backhoe. Instead of a bucket on the end of the long arm that extended out in front of the machine, however, was a metal post. Sloan watched as the man controlling the machine raised the post high in the air and then drove it into the ground. Once speared into the soil, the machine made the rickety sledgehammer noise as the hydraulics drove the pole into the ground until it was waist high. The noise abated for a moment—long enough for the man to load another post into the sleeve of the machine’s extended arm, position it ten feet from the first, and begin the process again.
There was a knock on the door that startled her. She closed the shutters and headed out of the bedroom. When she pulled open the front door Nora stood on the porch.
“Good morning,” Nora said. “Did you sleep alright?”
“Are you kidding me? The bed and the comforter are—”
